She had expected that he would go out in the dark and cut firewood for her. As for the matches, starting a flame without them was an easy trick for a hunter like Lance. She remembered with a sudden strange pang his once showing her how he could prepare his pile of shredded tinder, fire a blank charge into it, and have a blaze promptly. She heard him fumbling for something on the wall—his gun, of course. But the next instant there came the whine of the banjo; it hummed softly as it struck against the lintel. That was what he was getting—not the gun to light a fire—he was leaving her alone in the cabin! She guessed that he was going over to Derf's to play for a dance; and for a strenuous moment she was near to springing after him and begging him to stay with her.
But habit prevailed. She huddled, shivering, under her covers and went back to the sullen canker of her own wrongs. She might have had the pick of the countryside, and she had taken up with Lance Cleaverage. She had married him when and how he said—that was where she made her mistake. She should have told him then—she should have—but, in the midst of all this rush of 198 accusation, she knew well that she took Lance when and how she could get him, and at this moment her heart was clamoring to know where he was and what doing.
So she lay shivering, cold to the knees, her hands like ice, her teeth locked in a rigor that was as much spiritual as physical, till she could bear it no longer. Then she got hesitatingly up from the bed and stood long in the middle of the darkened room, turning her head about as though she could see. She knew where each article of furniture stood. It was her room, her home, hers and Lance's. Lance had built it; she had somehow failed pitiably, utterly, to make it hers; and she was well aware that she had failed to make it home for him—yet it was all either of them had. Back over her mind came memory of their wedding morning, when, his arm about her waist, her head half the time on his shoulder, they had visited every nook of the place and discussed between tender words and kisses all its scant furnishings. Then suddenly, without having come to any decision whatever, she found herself out in the cold rain, running through the woods toward the big road and the Derf place.
Down the long slope from the Gap she fled, then past the old quarry, past Spellman's clearing, and around the Spring hollow. She had never set foot on Derf land before. Through the fine rain Callista—spent, gasping, wet and disheveled—at last saw 199 the windows, a luminous haze; caught the sound of stamping, thudding feet, and heard the twang of Lance's banjo. She had approached through the grove, and stood at the side fence. The place was so public that its dogs paid little attention to comers and goers. When Callista came to herself fully, she realized that it was the bars of the milking place she leaned upon. Slowly she withdrew the upper one from its socket, stepped over, then turned and replaced it. With ever-increasing hesitation she faltered toward the house, avoiding the front and approaching the light at the side, where she hoped to be unobserved.
Shivering, shrinking, her loosened wet hair dragging in against her neck, she stared through the window into the lighted room. They were dancing in there. The sounds she had heard were from Lance's banjo indeed, but held in other hands, while Lance himself sat at a little table near the hearth, a steaming supper before him, Ola Derf waiting on him hand and foot, stooping to the coals for fresh supplies of good hot coffee, or smoking, crisp pones.
"Now you just hush!" she shrilled in response to somebody's importunities, as Callista hung listening. "Lance cain't play for no dancin' till he gits through his supper. And he's a-goin' to have time to eat, too. You Jim, put that banjo down—you cain't play hit. Pat for 'em if they're in such a hurry to dance."
The Aleshine girls from Big Buck Gap, a young widow who lived 200 half way down the Side, two cousins of the Derf's themselves—these were the women in the room. Callista was desperately afraid lest one of the loud-talking, half-intoxicated men in there should come out and discover her; yet she could not drag herself away from sight of Lance sitting housed, warm, comforted and fed—a home made for him. Something knocked at the door of her heart with a message that this scene carried; but fiercely she barred that door, and set herself to defend her own position.
Grasping a trunk of muscadine vine, which, when she shivered, shook down icy drops upon her, Callista rested long, regarding the scene before her. What should she do? To return to her home and leave her husband there seemed a physical impossibility. To go in and play the high-and-mighty, as she had been wont to do in her free girlhood, to glance over her shoulder with dropped eyelids and inform Lance Cleaverage that she cared not at all what he did or where he went—this were mere farce; her time for that sort of mumming was past.
Lance had finished his supper now, and turned from the board. It seemed to Callista that he looked well pleased with himself, satisfied, even gay. The sight set her teeth rattling in fresh shivers. Still he did not play for the dancers, who continued to make what headway they might to the time of Jim's patting.
Callista saw Ola bring the banjo and lay it in Lance's lap. Then 201 the little brown girl seated herself close beside him. He bent and placed the instrument properly in Ola's grasp, disposing the short, stubbed fingers on the strings. In the positive throe of jealousy that this sight brought, Callista must needs, for her own self-respect, recall that Lance had offered more than once to teach her to play, and that she had refused—and pretty shortly, too—to learn, or to touch the banjo, which she had come to hate with an unreasoning hatred. Now the dancers grew tired of Jim and his patting, and the call was for music.